Carolina … WE DID IT!!!

I kept waking up in the middle of the night during the playoffs, and I’d just stare at the ceiling. 

This image would come into my mind over and over again. 

I’d try not to think about it. Go back to sleep, Jordan. Don’t let your mind go there. You gotta rest. But as we got closer to the end of our journey this year it was harder to keep it out of my head. 

I kept picturing myself skating toward the guys, our incredible team, and I’m carrying the Cup their way. I’d see their faces, and what it meant to all of them. I’d look them in the eyes, and I could see their whole lives. The ups and downs, the wins and the heartbreaks. I could see it all. I just wanted that moment to be real so badly. I wanted it for them. For Carolina. And I could have stayed up all night thinking about it. 

I’d do my best to get back to sleep, to let my mind go somewhere else. 

But that idea was the driving force for me. Winning the Cup was something I had experienced in 2009, and for the past 17 years I’ve worked to get back there. My career, it sort of mirrors what Canes fans have gone through. It had been 20 years since Raleigh had the Cup. And I know how it weighed on this team. For me, every year that passed, I began to forget, just a bit, what it felt like in my hands, what it felt like over my head. The little details start to fade away. The moments in between that get lost to time. In some ways it was the same as looking at the photos of Roddy with the Cup in ’06. When I got to Carolina in 2012, that was only six years earlier. Then you blink and it’s been 20 years. And every season we couldn’t get it done, it felt further and further away. That’s the weight. 

The Cup has this gravity to it, this pull. It’s this mythical thing we played for on our backyard rink when we were kids. Sometimes if we didn’t have our own games, all four of us brothers would get out there. I remember getting picked up from practice, and in the winter it’s dark so early and we’d be pulling up to the house and I’d be looking through the trees trying to see if the lights were on by the rink. I just wanted to be out there. We’d play some two-versus-two. Oldest and youngest against the two middle. Posts to win the Cup. It was the best.

And then it all kind of happened fast. Eric got drafted in 2003, and I remember really just wanting to follow in his footsteps. Wanting to do what he was doing. Being four years younger, it was the coolest thing in the world to me seeing him in the NHL. Seeing Marc go in 2005, too. It was really special for our family. Then in my draft year in 2006, Eric won the Cup in Raleigh. I remember going to a few games in Edmonton during the Final and just not really even believing where I was. Seeing what it meant to Canes fans after they won, that stuck with me. Eric, Roddy, that whole team, they really understood Carolina. They were all connected. 

Two years later I was in my own Cup Final with Pittsburgh. We watched Detroit celebrate in our rink, and I just remember sitting on the bench and feeling lower than I’d ever felt in my whole life to that point. Devastated, really. You dream of it, you work your tail off for it, and then it’s there and gone. 

I’m bringing this up because there’s this vivid memory I have that I still think about to this day. It was a few days after we lost and the dust had sort of settled on the season. I think I was at the facility, and I remember just looking at Flower and being like, “We really have to go do that all over again?” All the work we put in that year. All the time in the gym, on the ice, in the film room, on planes, buses … and we fell short. And now we have to go to do it again and hope it’s different?

I think there’s a lot of noise out there about learning from losses or, you know, so-and-so had to lose before they could win. And I don’t know if I agree with that. We were a good team in 2008, and we could have won that series. I don’t know if we had to lose that year. But what I think Flower and I, and our whole team, took away from that experience was that when the moment comes around, it’s everything that you put into it before then that makes the difference.

A year later, we were champions. And yes, some of those memories have faded a bit, but some of them never lose their color. Especially being able to share the Cup with everyone who helped you get there. Taking it back home to Thunder Bay, spreading all that joy … it was an amazing feeling. I don’t think I took any of it for granted, but I don’t think I quite knew how hard it would be to get back there. 

Life, man….

It’s weird.

Sometimes you get married on draft day in 2012.

And sometimes you get traded during your wedding reception.

And sometimes you look at your beautiful bride, and you look at Sid, and you think, Who do I tell first?

But jokes aside, leaving Pittsburgh was hard. For me, I really wanted to play with Eric. It was something we always talked about out in our backyard. We dreamt about it. Family is everything to us, and I don’t regret it one bit. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard to watch the Pens have the success they did. We struggled in Carolina. I think we had the lowest attendance in the league the year the Pens won in 2016. And I don’t blame our fans, the product on the ice wasn’t what they deserved. It hadn’t been for a while. 

We traded Eric that year as well. That was a real low point for me. It was just really tough. I think if you ask my wife she’d tell you about a pretty unhappy version of me. I was questioning things, trying to figure out what the future was going to hold for me and my family. But I kept coming back to this idea.

It was my decision to come here, to sign here.

I made that commitment. 

And I promised myself I would do everything I could to win here.

I had seen in 2006 what Raleigh could be. The way the building could shake to its foundation. The way bars downtown would drape in red and black. How Carolina could be a hockey state. I saw it.

And I know somebody else who saw it, too.

Roddy.

Man, he is Carolina Hurricanes hockey to me.

I remember in 2018, Tom Dundon had just bought the team and he came to me after the season ended and said, “Do you think Rod would be a good head c—”

I cut him off before he could finish the sentence.

“Yup.”

No-brainer.

People ask about “culture” and “brick-by-brick” and all this stuff. Here’s how I’d describe it: Roddy just came in and raised the expectation. Whatever you were doing before, it wasn’t good enough. Everybody expected more now. And the guy next to you was going to hold you to that. Roddy would tell us what was possible and we’d believe him because we could see it. He was on the walls, he was on the backs of jerseys in the stands (and he should be in the Hall of Fame, by the way). And that expectation has been there every day since he became the coach. I think you see that in the guys who have been here a while. Slavo, Fishy, Marty. And a lot more. We all try to set the tone that Roddy puts in place.

What I think really made the difference though was the ability to find multiple ways to win. Those close calls in the playoffs, the conference final losses, they wear on you. Not just physically but mentally. They make you think what you’re doing isn’t working, or will never work. Every year it was harder and harder to come back and get the whole thing going again. That’s where I give the most credit to Roddy and our front office. They found ways to make us a different team every year, to keep us building toward something.

The additions we made this year, the guys we brought in, they were the right fit. Not just because they’re great players, but because they were willing to buy in. We play a different brand of hockey down here. It’s a little unique. It’s not what guys are used to. But the way Nik, K’Andre, and everybody who’s come in and stepped up has gelled with our room, that brought us to another level.

I think that was clear against Montreal. Losing Game 1 the way we did…. I mean, yeah, it was hard not to think about the previous years. Like, Here we go again. Those scars are real, man. But the way we responded in Game 2, it was incredible. I remember looking around the room after Nik scored in OT and thinking to myself that this group was different. It wasn’t going to be the same story with us. 

And the next three games that followed were three of the very best examples of Canes hockey I’ve ever been a part of.

That’s who we are. And we showed it when it mattered.

Before Game 1 against Vegas I was about as nervous as I’ve been in a while.

Those nights I’d spend thinking about carrying the Cup to our guys, I’d think a lot about the vets. Hallsy, Freddie, Marty, Ghost. Guys who hadn’t won one. I wanted it for them. And it felt like now or never. I know those aren’t good thoughts to have, and I didn’t need extra pressure. But that’s just how I felt. We needed this one. I never said that outl oud, but I know other guys felt that way.

I saw it.

Nobody was going to quit. That’s an easy thing to say or to think. Probably a lot of teams think they have no quit. But how many teams can come from four goals down in the third period of a Cup Final game? How many teams can have their backs broken in a double-OT game after coming all the way back and then find a way to win the next one? The next three? That’s what no quit looks like right there. We wanted to make every shift as difficult as possible for them. We didn’t want to give them an inch. We didn’t want to leave any doubt.

Game 6, for me, was what this group was all about. On the road, Cup in the building, just playing the game we played all year. Four lines, everything we got every shift. Playing for the guy next to you. Playing for Carolina. When Nik scored that empty netter … what a feeling. Like a hug from an old friend. It felt like it had been 17 years, and it felt like it was yesterday.

I saw the clip of Roddy and Fishy hugging as everybody jumped off the bench, and it made me emotional. Just two guys who have spent the past ten years together trying to figure this thing out. Trying to get us over the line. Two of the hardest working guys I know. I watched Fishy come in as a baby-faced Finnish kid who barely knew any English. Now he’s got a little girl and his name’s on the Cup.

Man, stuff like that is what made that moment so special.

The journey.

I saw so many of these guys grow up. Turn into husbands, fathers. It just made it mean so much. 

Everybody was jumping all over each other by the glass and I could see the Canes fans in the stands, and I just felt them, you know? That relief, that love, that joy. I knew what they had been through … but they kept believing in us. They’re the best in the league.

Then the moment came. The one that ran through my head all spring. I felt the Cup in my hands again and it was the same but it was also so different. It was something lost, something I’d worked so hard to find again. Something I’d dreamt about, prayed for, and there it was. I put it over my head and I skated it over to Freddie. A guy who meant the world to this team. A guy who never gave up. A champion. Hallsy, Marty, Fishy, Slavo — I could go up and down our whole roster. Watching everybody have their time, it’s one of the greatest moments of my life. 

My journey back to that point was long. But it was just one of them. Each guy, each staff member, every Caniac everywhere had their own road to that point. And I’m thankful to each and every one of them.

It was a night I’ll hold in my heart for the rest of my life. 

After everybody had a chance with the Cup, and all the confetti fell, I was on the ice in Vegas with my three brothers, and we were remembering a dream we used to have.

-Jordan